Website recruits dying patients to deliver telegrams to the dead

A service that uses terminally ill volunteers to deliver telegrams to the afterlife has been condemned as "predatory and cruel" by religious and charity groups.

Afterlife Telegrams, a non-profit making organisation, asks those who wish to contact a dead relative or friend for a "donation" of $5 (£2.60) a word. The message is then memorised by a terminally ill volunteer who will endeavour to pass it on when he or she dies. The fee, depending on the wishes of the messenger, is then given to a relative, a charity or put towards the payment of medical bills. All the volunteers have a prognosis of survival for a year or less. If they live longer than a year, the fee is reimbursed and the telegram is "delivered" free.

The Roman Catholic Church called the service "cruel, uncharitable and uncaring".

Paul Kinsella, the company's 34-year-old founder from Illinois in the United States, insisted, however, that Afterlife Telegrams served to "help people".

He said: "It occurred to me that a person could want to send a specific message to someone that went unsaid before they died. You can type the message into the internet site and we then ensure that the volunteer has memorised it by testing them at regular intervals.

"I am sending one to my grandmother, Rita Kinsella, because she died in her early 80s before she could see any of her grandchildren, so I wanted to let her know about that."

Mr Kinsella has one volunteer who has memorised four telegrams, one from a customer in Britain. The messenger, known only as Lance, is a family friend of Mr Kinsella's diagnosed with necrotising pancreatitis in 1999.

"He is not in pain, except for brief bouts, and has full control of his mental faculties," Mr Kinsella said. "We do not exploit people. All our terminally ill messengers are mentally competent adults who have volunteered to help us. They are physically sick, not mentally ill, and are quite able to make their own decisions."

Mr Kinsella said that he got the idea for his company from a scene in Blankman, a 1994 comedy in which the hero asks a character about to be blown up by gangsters to deliver a message to his grandmother. "It was an unusually poignant moment and that's where the thought came from," he said. "Of course, we cannot guarantee that the message will be delivered successfully, but we do ensure that the messengers have promised to do what can be done to deliver their telegrams."

Mr Kinsella admitted that the possibility of reincarnation could make the successful delivery of a telegram impossible. Nor was there any guarantee that the messenger would end up in the same spiritual realm as the deceased.

"The messenger could go to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory, but we do offer some advice on seeking out the first intelligent person you can find to help you," he said. "After all, you can visit people in jail, so perhaps you can visit people in Hell." The site, which has been receiving 1,000 hits a day since its inception in 2003, offers guidelines for messengers.

"There may not be pens and paper in the afterlife, but there might be something equivalent with which you can record information," it says, before advising messengers to seek advice from "other entities, such as angels, spirits, demigods or fairies, that are indigenous to the afterlife and who might be willing to help you. Animals, such as dogs, dolphins, apes, etc … might be inclined to help as well.

"There are many unknowns. The best advice we can give you is to be focused, resourceful, creative and (if necessary) aggressive. Good luck."

The scheme was dismissed as "daft" by Church groups and charities for the terminally ill. A Church of England spokesman said: "The Church has always cautioned people about the dangers of contacting those who are dead. This is a burden that terminally ill people probably don't need. It is a daft predatory scheme."

David Burland, the director of fund-raising for the charity Help the Hospices, said that he would "not endorse the subject or tone of the website, which could cause potential distress".

Fr Andrew Faley, the assistant general secretary for ecumenism and inter-faith relations for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said: "This seems to be incredibly cruel and neither charitable or caring. These terminally ill people are facing a huge amount of tying up loose ends and do not need any extra emotional baggage."